[lbo-talk] Liberalism

[Carl Remick]

>I jump to the chance to agree totally on something with Jim. A constant
>attribute of this list is a tendency to underestimate the intelligence
>AND knowledge of the u.s. public, a failure grounded in the assumption
>that the only kind of intelligence is the writer's kind, and the only
>important knowledge is the writer's knowledge -- which makes it easy to
>call a couple hundred million people stupid and ignorant.
>
>Carrol

Verily, Carrol, America's drool cup runneth over.

Unless the 14-year-old previously mentioned in this thread is a lifelong 
resident of Brigadoon, it seems inconceivable that he could be completely 
ignorant of what the hammer and sickle signifies.  US popular culture 
remains as saturated with cold-war detritus now as it was with WWII 
references when I was 14 in 1964 ... and there wasn't a teenager alive then 
who didn't understand that the swastika was a logo heavily freighted with 
meaning.

I don't understand why you and Jim are so adamant about cutting Americans 
slack concerning their gross and growing ahistoric cluelessness.  It is 
bone-deep, pervasive ignorance of the past that accounts for Americans' 
pernicious, ever-blooming "innocence" -- blinding Americans to the vast 
global evils that US policy has wrought, encouraging a wholly delusive sense 
of national victimhood and breeding domestic support for US wars of 
aggression.

Carl

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